Case study: WhatsApp assistant
Answers for every student, so the president doesn't have to.
Vera is a WhatsApp assistant we built for student societies. It answers questions about the society, membership and events in English, Urdu and Roman Urdu, and hands the conversation to a person when it can't help. Its first deployment is the BUITEMS IT Society.
Launching 25 October 2026Live since 25 October 2026
- Client
- Society of Information Technology (SIT), the student society of the Department of IT at BUITEMS
- Channel
- The official WhatsApp Business Platform
- Languages
- English, Urdu script and Roman Urdu, detected automatically
- Built with
- Node.js and Express, Google Sheets as the admin panel, open-weight AI models served through Groq
- Testing
- 235 automated tests, plus a 30-question pre-launch benchmark in three languages
- Status
- Launching 25 October 2026Live since 25 October 2026
The problem
A new student society gets the same questions hundreds of times: what is it, is membership free, when is the next event, how do I join. They all land in the president's WhatsApp, at every hour, in three different ways of writing.
The society needed something that answers instantly and correctly, never makes up a date or a fee, and knows when to step aside for a real person.
What Vera does
Most questions are answered from exact data, with no AI involved. The AI layer only handles the open questions, and only from approved facts.
Three ways of writing
Students write in English, Urdu script or Roman Urdu. Vera detects which and replies in the same one.
Events the society manages itself
Office-bearers add events in a Google Sheet. Dates, fees and registration links reach students within minutes, with no developer involved.
Exact answers for exact questions
Fees, dates, venues and links are always answered from the data. The language model never writes them.
Grounded AI for open questions
"Is it worth joining?" gets a written answer built only from the society's approved facts.
Honest when it doesn't know
If a detail hasn't been announced, Vera says so, rather than guessing.
A person when it matters
Asking for a person, or reporting a problem, logs the conversation for the team to follow up.
Built so it can't embarrass the society
- Every AI reply is checked in code. Links, numbers, names, places and claims about who can join must match the society's facts, or the reply is not sent.
- Planted claims don't work. A student can't get Vera to repeat something false by stating it first. Replies are checked against the facts, never against the student's own words.
- Safe when the AI is down. If the AI service fails, a circuit breaker pauses it and Vera keeps answering from exact data.
- Secure by default. Signed webhooks only, duplicate and flood protection, a link allowlist, and sheet writes protected against formula injection.
- Private by design. Phone numbers are masked in logs, and sign-up details never enter the debugging logs.
One engine, many organisations
Vera is a product, not a one-off bot. Everything specific to the BUITEMS IT Society (its name, answers, links and team contact) lives in a single configuration file. A new society or organisation gets its own file, and the engine stays the same.
That keeps every deployment on the same tested code, and lets us set up a new organisation without rewriting anything.
Measured before launch
The engine is covered by 235 automated tests. A 30-question benchmark of real student questions, ten each in English, Roman Urdu and Urdu, is run against the live AI before releases. The pre-launch stress test also replays attacks: a hallucinating model, the AI switched off, and messages designed to plant false claims.
What's next
After launch, a two-week beta records anonymised conversations so we can see which questions Vera couldn't answer and fix them. Phase two adds announcements to members and an admin view.
Measured results from real use will be added here once there's data. We don't publish numbers we haven't measured.
Want Vera for your society or organisation?
Tell us who messages you and what they ask. We'll tell you honestly whether Vera fits, and what setting it up would take.